Universal Human Rights Month Booklist
December is Universal Human Rights Month, a time for people around the world to join together and stand up for the rights and dignity of all individuals.
Human Rights Day is observed every year on December 10 — the day the United Nations General Assembly adopted, in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The UDHR proclaims the inalienable rights that everyone is entitled to as a human being regardless of race, color, religion, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Find it in English here. Find it in over 500 other languages here.
Click on a title to find it in our catalog; and find many more titles at cobbcat.org.
Children’s Picture Books
All Are Neighbors by Alexandra Penfold
All Are Welcome by Alexandra Penfold
Four Feet, Two Sandals by Karen Lynn Williams
Get Up, Stand Up by Cedella Marley
Hair Twins by Raakhee Mirchandani
I Am Enough by Grace Byers
I Am Human: A Book of Empathy by Susan Verde
I Can Be All Three by Salima Alikhan
It’s Okay to be Different by Todd Parr
Lunch from Home by Joshua David Stein
More Than Peach: Changing the World… One Crayon at a Time! by Bellen Woodard
Steamboat School by Deborah Hopkinson
Thao by Thao Lam
We Wait for the Sun by Dovey Johnson Roundtree
What's the Difference?: Being Different is Amazing by Doyin Richards
You Are a Story by Bob Raczka
Your Name is a Song by Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow
Children’s Nonfiction
Dreams of Freedom: In Words and Pictures
Fighting for Yes!: The Story of Disability Rights Activist Judith Heumann by Maryann Cocca-Leffler
I Am Malala: How One Girl Stood Up for Education and Changed the World by Malala Yousafzai
Lifting As We Climb: Black Women’s Battle for the Ballot Box by Evette Dionne
Playing at the Border: A Story of Yo-Yo Ma by Joanna Ho
Rainbow Revolutionaries: 50 LGBTQ+ People Who Made History by Sarah Prager
Right Now!: Real Kids Speaking Up for Change by Miranda Paul
Separate is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez & Her Family's Fight for Desegregation by Duncan Tonatiuh
Walking for Water: How One Boy Stood Up for Gender Equality by Susan Hughes
We Are All Born Free: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Pictures by Amnesty International
We are a Garden: A Story of How Diversity Took Root in America by Lisa Westberg Peters
Why We Live Where We Live by Kira Vermond
Children’s and Preteen Chapter Books
The Bone Sparrow by Zana Fraillon
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
Equal by Joyce Moyer Hostetter
Essie and the March on Selma by Anitra Butler-Ngugi
A Good Kind of Trouble by Lisa Moore Ramée
I Am Not a Number by Jenny Kay Dupuis
A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park
The Many Meanings of Meilan by Andrea Wang
My Name Was Hussein by Hristo Kyuchukov
The Stars Beneath Our Feet by David Barclay Moore
Young Adult Fiction
Banned Book Club by Hyun Sook Kim
Everything Within and In Between by Nikki Barthelmess
A Girl in Three Parts by Suzanne Daniel
Golden Boy by Tara Sullivan
I Rise by Marie Arnold
Loving vs. Virginia by Patricia Hruby Powell
March by John Lewis
Music From Another World by Robin Talley
Watch Us Rise by Renée Watson
Young Adult Nonfiction
#NotYourPrincess edited by Mary Beth Leatherdale
Dark Sky Rising: Reconstruction and the Dawn of Jim Crow by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Girls Resist!: A Guide to Activism, Leadership, and Starting a Revolution by KaeLyn Rich
Jane Against the World: Roe v. Wade and the Fight for Reproductive Rights by Karen Blumenthal
Making It Right: Building Peace, Settling Conflict by Marilee Peters
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi
Stonewall: Breaking Out in the Fight for Gay Rights by Ann Bausum
We Are Not Yet Equal: Understanding Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson
Adult Fiction
Death Rattle by Alex Gilly
Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok
In the Midst of Winter Isabel Allende
Joan is Okay by Weike Wang
Little Bee by Chris Cleave
Maame by Jessica George
The Ministry of Special Cases by Nathan Englander
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Adult Nonfiction
Belabored: A Vindication of the Rights of Pregnant Women by Lyz Lenz
Bryan Stevenson: I Know This to be True: On Equality, Justice & Compassion by Bryan Stevenson
Everybody: A Book About Freedom by Olivia Laing
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas Kristof
Holding Together: The Hijacking of Rights in America and How to Reclaim Them for Everyone by John HF Shattuck
Hood Feminism: Notes From the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall
How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up For Education and Was Shot by the Taliban by Malala Yousafzai
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America by Andrés Reséndez
A Place to Belong: Celebrating Diversity and Kinship in the Home and Beyond by Amber O,Neal Johnston
Period. End of Sentence: A New Chapter in the Fight for Menstrual Justice by Anita Diamant
Period: The Real Story of Menstruation by Kathryn BH Clancy
Sipping Dom Pérignon Through a Straw: Reimagining Success as a Disabled Achiever by Eddie Ndopu
To Stop a Warlord: My Story of Justice, Grace, and the Fight for Peace by Shannon Sedgwick Davis
Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality by Sarah McBride
Until We Are Free: My Fight for Human Rights in Iran by Shīrīn ʻIbādī
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories From Rwanda by Peter Gourevitch